ANOTHER ONE???
AND on the same bill
Posted on 05/31/2015 7:05:35 PM PDT by rickmichaels
It might be safe to go in the water now.
Monday marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Jaws, director Steven Spielberg’s tale of a great white shark terrorizing a picturesque seaside town. It’s a bona fide classic, deserving of all the praise it gets.
But it’s also something of a relic, a throwback to a simpler time in moviemaking when we were less cynical and more easily frightened. For all the monster movie remakes being trotted out this decade, it’s actually not surprising we haven’t seen Jaws sequel since 1987’s Jaws: The Revenge (and not just because that movie was astoundingly, impossibly awful.)
As much as we love Jaws, here are five reasons it would fail if it were to be made today.
1. Audiences have no patience
In adapting Peter Benchley’s novel for the big screen, Spielberg took his time creating characters we cared about and a world we could believe in, then slowly ratcheted up the tension and terror. We don’t get a clear look at the shark in Jaws until more than halfway through the film, and that just wouldn’t fly today. There are some exceptions – Cloverfield, Super 8 and last year’s Godzilla come to mind – but for the most part, modern audiences hate waiting to see a monster movie’s main attraction.
2. Less is no longer more
For a movie about a giant man-eating shark, Jaws spends very little time – only four minutes in total – showing the beast on screen. Again, a handful of modern monster movies have gotten away with this, but even last year’s otherwise solid Godzilla enraged some fans with how little screen time its radioactive lizard got. Doing a killer shark movie with only four minutes of killer shark in it would be box office suicide in 2015.
3. Digital effects would ruin it
Spielberg famously had endless problems with his mechanical shark prop, but the final result on screen was an actual, physical presence, giving the actors something to react to. A movie like Jaws wouldn’t be made today without reliance on computer-generated effects, and our eyes would immediately know that what we’re seeing isn’t real, diminishing its fear factor. That’s why you can bet the all-digital dinos of Jurassic World just aren’t going to have the same impact as the massive robotic T-rex in Jurassic Park.
4. No one goes swimming anymore
OK, that’s an exaggeration. But it’s true that summer beach vacations just aren’t the tradition they once were. Parents and kids alike are burdened with more commitments and less free time, and Griswold-style family trips are becoming a relative rarity. A shark terrorizing a seaside resort wouldn’t resonate the same way it did in 1975 – most of us would shrug and say, “Who has time to go to the beach?”
5. Sharks have jumped the shark
Maybe it began with a computer-generated shark making a meal of Samuel L. Jackson in 1999’s Deep Blue Sea, or maybe it was even earlier than that. But sharks have gone from being a primal menace to a punchline. Imagine trying to make a serious, scary killer shark movie in the wake of Sharknado. You’d need more than just a bigger boat.
It would still work. It would just have a hard time getting greenlit.
ANOTHER ONE???
AND on the same bill
Every time I watch it it scares the bejeesus out of me again.
The first time when I saw it at the theatre and Roy Scheider was slapping that pole in the water and then the shark suddenly came up it scared me so bad my arm flew up and some of my coke went out of the cup and on the person behind me. :-)
Movie brings back big time 70s nostalgia for me.
I don’t agree with #4. Beaches are still plenty crowded.
And #5 is just plain silly. The whole premise is “why the first big shark movie wouldn’t work today” and then ending it with “because it wouldn’t be the first big shark movie”.
Some writers, I guess, just don’t have that much to write about and have to troll the waters for shreds of a story idea.
Absolutely agree it would work. I am so sick of digital special effects. People have lost the feeling of what it was like to literally be on the edge of your seat that Jaws gave you. I saw that movie as a teen with a bunch of other kids at our little beach town movie theater. When Hooper is diving and the head pops out from the boat one of my friends put both arms out,pushed people back and yelled look out. And we did jump back and then we started laughing. That was awesome.
Jaw on the other hand was a classic horror film that gradually built up suspense and had you on the edge of your seat the entire time. I think there was maybe 90 seconds of actual "shark" time but that's all you needed to keep people out of the water, myself included, for years.
I was 13 when the movie came out in 1975. I can still remember seeing it with my father. It was the first and only time I saw a movie with him (because he wanted to see it too). It was a hot muggy night and the lines at the theatre were literally wrapped around the building. I never saw anything like it before. This was before multiplexes but this particular theatre had three cinemas and all three of them were showing "Jaws" 45 minutes apart. The other two movies that were supposed to be showing evidently got cancelled. It took us over two hours to get inside.
I think that was when the word "blockbuster" was coined. Jaws was a blockbuster of a movie.
Reason number 6. Overexposure from too many Shark Weeks. Sharks aren’t scary anymore.
Yep. At least pre-CGI special effects had some soul and some relation to reality. CGI is ugly and over the top.
Yes, I read the book when I was 13 (after seeing the movie) and I was shocked by that. It was when I first learned what the word “cuckolded” meant.
Yep,that movie really had quite an effect. For ages after seeing it I’d always here that ominous music in my head when I was at the beach.
I was 15 when it came out mrs Al baby and I saw the avenger movie today it was all cg nothing paid much attention to laws of physics and it was all bass and loud I forgot my ear plugs one of my ears rattles
You’re gonna need a bigger boat!
Used to be a water ski fanatic. (grew up just miles from the Mississippi) Shared a ski boat with a friend and had a good sound system in it. We would take some noob out and when he would get in the water we’d put the Jaws theme on the system. A couple practically clawed their way back in the boat!
Can’t tell you how many times I’ve said “going go need a bigger boat”
That scene also had me just about jumping out of my skin, too, lol.
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